Facing Scrutiny for FSB Ties, Kaspersky Lab Offers Free Antivirus to the World

July 26, 2017

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Kaspersky Lab, one of the world’s leading cyber security agencies which is suspected of ties to the Russian security services, has launched a worldwide roll-out of a free antivirus program.

The Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab has recently come under pressure from the U.S. government, which has accused the company of harboring close ties with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). On July 11, the Trump administration removed Kaspersky Lab from the list of software vendors for state agencies.

Kaspersky Lab has denied the accusations, calling the Bloomberg report which claimed to have evidence of the company’s ties to the FSB “banya journalism.”

The free software campaign is in celebration of the company's 20th anniversary, CEO Yevgeny Kaspersky announced on his blog.

“The roll-out won’t be fully global instantaneously; it’s going to be done over four months in waves as per different regions. The first wave will be the U.S., Canada, and many of the Asia Pacific countries,” Kaspersky wrote, adding that coverage would be global by the end of November.

Founded in 1997, Kaspersky Lab is one of the fastest-growing anti-virus and cyber-security software firms in the world. It claims to have more than 270,000 corporate clients and 400 million users worldwide.